Chasing Hope: Courage In A Hurting World

Christianity Today Book Review:  After Covering Global Disasters for Decades, Nicholas Kristof Is More Hopeful Than Ever, by Gary Haugen (Founder & CEO, International Justice Mission; Author, Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World (2021)) (reviewing Nicholas Kristof, Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life (2024)):

This is a memoir from someone who has led one of the most dramatically interesting lives of the last half-century, as an acclaimed foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times.

If you make a list of the world’s most shattering and consequential conflicts, catastrophes, and convulsions over the last 40 years, the odds are very high that Kristof was present to witness them. So too are the odds that someone was threatening to shoot him. ...

The book’s narrative would be implausible as a movie script, but it’s irresistible as personal storytelling because there is no hint of bravado, attention seeking, or adrenaline addiction. We simply find ourselves following a very sincere human who, over a lifetime, keeps taking small steps to go see what is happening to other humans who are suffering unspeakable brutality in the hidden corners of our world. As he goes, he finds himself sharing the unseen terror borne by millions of ordinary people when history’s great catastrophes unfold. And once among them, Kristof becomes the steward of their stories. ...

This is not only a book about an exceedingly interesting and thoughtful life. It also poses interesting questions. How ought humans to live with eyes wide open in a fallen world of so much suffering, violence, injustice, and death—yet so much courage, love, undeniable beauty, and pulsating life? ...

What was it like to be alive through these catastrophic and chaotic global events? Who saw things more clearly and wisely at the time, and why? What should good people have done? What should good people do now?

These are especially urgent questions for people of Christian faith, who profess to know what Jesus would teach about living in a fallen and violent yet beautiful and worthy world. A world that, according to this same Jesus, he is relentlessly at work redeeming through his grace and through those who follow him.

Although I don’t know if Kristof is a believer, he seems thoroughly Jesus-curious—or, as my kids would say of so many friends, “Christian adjacent.” Kristof writes with a rare appreciation for the earnest, unnamed Christians who are serving, healing, and loving in the most Christlike ways in the hardest places.

In Chasing Hope, many of his most exemplary heroes seem to be following Jesus. Some are famous, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter. But most you’ve likely never heard of: Dr. Catherine Hamlin in Ethiopia, Dr. Tom Catena in the Sudan, Sister Rachel Fassera in Uganda, Dr. Denis Mukwege in the Congo, or the good people of the First Presbyterian Church of Portland, who sponsored his refugee father in the 1940s and made Kristof’s story possible.

For years, Kristof has written a New York Times Christmas column with earnest questions for Christian leaders about Jesus, the Bible, and the behavior of Christian people [Beth Moore (2023), Russell Moore (2022), Jim Wallis (2020), Philip Yancey (2019), William Lane Craig (2018), Jimmy Carter (2017), Cardinal Joseph Tobin (2017), and Tim Keller (2016)]. As he has come to appreciate IJM’s Christian community around the world and their work addressing slavery and violence among the vulnerable poor, he has asked me similar questions over the years—especially about evangelical Christians in America.

For decades, [International Justice Mission] has been inviting American Christians to recover the biblical teaching about God’s love for the world and Christ’s passion for justice. Indeed, over 27 years, a generation of American Christians has helped power an IJM movement that has brought freedom and healing to hundreds of thousands of people who were enslaved, imprisoned, beaten, raped, and robbed in the world’s poorest communities. It would be a shame for American Christians to lose Christ’s heart for the world and for the vulnerable, leaving their preoccupations more inward, tribal, resentful, political, and fearful.

The Christian faith teaches that every person in the world—of every nation, tribe, and tongue—is of infinite and equal worth. Jesus taught that if people are hurting and in need, the relevant question is not Are they my neighbor? but Will I show mercy and love? Will I treat them as I would want to be treated if I were enslaved, imprisoned, beaten, raped, or robbed?

This is what makes Kristof’s life story such a welcome provocation for Christians old and young. In his writing and reporting, he seems to act as if Christ’s teachings about the world and its people are true, even though he may not share Christian beliefs about his divinity and the kingdom of God. What, then, should we make of those who do profess these beliefs but don’t act as though they are true?

More provocatively, what if they brought their beliefs and actions into greater harmony, radiating authenticity, courage, humility, and joy? Over a generation, I (like Kristof) have witnessed that such lives of Christlike beauty are, indeed, possible. And around the world, I see a new generation of everyday saints quietly doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with their God.

As I write this, I am in South Asia, coming from a profound day with two young women of faith (one from Nebraska and one from Bangladesh) who are partnering with IJM colleagues and local authorities to bring healing to women and girls ravaged by sexual violence. Like Kristof, they are chasing hope—and finding it. And by their lives, they testify not only that the teachings of Jesus are true, but that he himself is true.

Gary Haugen teaches a course at Pepperdine Caruso Law each spring on Human Rights and the Rule of Law in the Developing World as part of our Sudreau Global Justice Institute.

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